Truant vs. absent

Truancy: In California, a student is truant if he/she is absent or tardy by more than 30 minutes without a valid excuse on three occasions in a school year.

Chronic absence: In California, chronic absence is typically defined as being absent for any reason (excused or unexcused) for at least 10 percent of the school year. Thus, in a 175- or 180-day school year, a student who misses 18 days of school or more is considered chronically absent.

Source: California Attorney General's Office

At Adams Elementary School in Costa Mesa, a student who relied on aid for lunch missed nearly 90 days of school.

Drive south toward the Newport Bay, where the median income spikes to about $87,000. A student at Eastbluff Elementary who does not receive free or reduced-price lunch was absent for just as much, according to data which showed how many days each student in the district missed during the 2013-14 school year.

It’s hard to know from attendance records the circumstances facing either student – perhaps a broken home, a medical condition or housing instability. That information is not public and sometimes unknown to teachers.

But studies show that students like these, who miss a significant amount of school, are more likely to perform poorly on reading and math tests, drop out of school early or develop health problems, among other complications.

Most researchers are accustomed to seeing high levels of absence in low-income neighborhoods, where the odds are often against its students.

In the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, where the student population is split between low- and high-income areas of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, chronic absence has hit both income levels just as hard over the last three years, according to district data reviewed by the Register. These are the students who missed at least 10 percent of their school year and who will suffer both academically and socially because of it.

The district’s director of student and community services, Phil D’Agostino, said he and other administrators are aware of chronic absences in the district, but he hasn’t studied a school-by-school breakdown of chronic absences. He took over the position this year and is in the process of addressing absences in the district.

He’ll be meeting with school principals to determine the best solutions. For now, teachers and principals will be looking at attendance data for warning signs of chronic absence and reaching out to parents to help fix the problem, D’Agostino said. It’s an ongoing practice that he and others hope will bring more efficiency to the school year.

“We obviously want every kid to be in school every day,” D’Agostino said. “And it’s a team effort every day … between site administrators and district leadership as well as our parents. They all have to be working together to promote attendance awareness.”

WHAT ARE THE IMPACTS?

The district does not benefit financially if students show up for school. It’s one of a handful of school districts in the state where funding comes from local property taxes instead of student attendance. Perhaps this is one reason attendance hasn’t been emphasized as much in the past, said Newport-Mesa board President Karen Yelsey.

“I do think we haven’t made (attendance) a focus,” Yelsey said. “Unlike other districts (that) get funding based on attendance; we don’t. So probably (it is) a little bit for some of that reason, (that) it hasn’t been as important.”

Yelsey believes this year, the focus is back on attendance. Among the goals set in the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan – a document that ties district priorities to funding – there are three attendance-related targets. One requires that by June 2017, the number of unexcused all-day absences of elementary school students will decrease by at least 3 percent.

“I think they’ll be giving it a harder push this year,” Yelsey said. “We want to be efficient in our teaching, and for teachers to be teaching at the highest level, they need students present.”

Though the empty seats might not hit the district financially, the academic impact of chronic absence starts right away.

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